Spotted hyena

How do you identify a spotted hyena?

The spotted hyena is a carnivore standing 70 to 90 cm at the shoulder and weighing 45 to 65 kg, and the female is a tenth bigger than the male. The back slopes down toward the rear, with high shoulders, a low rump and a thick neck. The tawny to gray coat carries dark spots, the ears are round and the muzzle is black. The striped hyena, rarer and nocturnal, has vertical stripes and a mane along its back. The African wild dog, often confused with it, is a dog blotched with white, black and tawny, with big round ears and a white-tipped tail. At night, the spotted hyena's laugh sounds like nothing else.

How do spotted hyenas live?

Spotted hyenas live in matriarchal clans of up to 80 animals, where even the lowest-ranking female dominates every male. They hunt in packs, at night and at first light, and kill most of their food themselves: wildebeest, zebras and gazelles. Carrion makes up the rest. Their jaws, among the most powerful of any mammal, crush bone. The clan holds a territory around dens dug into the ground, where the cubs are born. Lions are their age-old rivals: the two species steal each other's kills, and lions kill the hyenas they catch.

Where and when can you see spotted hyenas on safari?

In Tanzania, Ngorongoro Crater is the best place to see hyenas. Large clans hunt there in broad daylight on the short grass, and often finish off a wildebeest before the lions do. Elsewhere, they come out mostly at night. Dawn is the time to look, when they head home nose to the ground or circle a lion kill. The Serengeti has many along the migration route. In Nyerere they show up near camps at dusk, and in Ruaha on night drives.

In Kenya, you come across them in every season in the Masai Mara and Amboseli, where they follow the herds alongside the lions. At Lake Nakuru and in Tsavo East, they come around the lodges at night. That is when their laugh rises from the bush, and they walk into tents left open.

In South Africa, Kruger shows them along the roads in the early morning. In Sabi Sand, they prowl around leopard kills at night.

Are spotted hyenas endangered?

The IUCN lists the spotted hyena as Least Concern, with an estimated 27,000 to 47,000 animals in 2014. It remains common in the large parks but is declining everywhere else, persecuted by herders, poisoned and snared. Its reputation as a scavenger and livestock thief goes before it. Research in the Serengeti and Ngorongoro has revealed a complex society, with a social intelligence that rivals that of primates. It has been studied in these two places more closely than anywhere else.